– A decision by the Supreme Court of India to make testing for coronavirus free places an unfair financial burden on medical firms and could see a reduction in testing, already among the world’s lowest, said business leaders and health experts.
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, executive chairperson of Biocon Limited, one of India’s biggest biotech firms, said private institutions could not be expected to operate on credit. The top court, responding to a public interest petition, said on Wednesday private medical institutions should be playing a philanthropic role at a time of national crisis and it would not allow a situation where India’s poor could not afford a test for the virus that is quickly spreading through the country.
The numbers are small compared to the United States, Italy and Spain and one of the reasons is that the country is testing a narrow range of the population, doctors say. The plan is to scale up to 20,000 tests in the next few days and eventually to 100,000 a day in the worse-case scenario. The health sector like others parts of the Indian economy is struggling and in no position to offer a free ride, she said.